


Beyond the Pale

by ivyblossom



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-07-19
Updated: 2002-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:05:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyblossom/pseuds/ivyblossom





	Beyond the Pale

He's sitting there seething. It's what he does these days, he sits and he seethes. You can't see steam rising from his ears but you might as well. He sets his mouth like he's determined and his lips form this fine pale line. During class he picks at the skin around his nails and his fingers are all raw. He's got these puffy red stumps for fingers, like a prisoner who paws at the walls. Like he's trapped and it's all he can do to keep himself alive. Sometimes his fingers bleed and he doesn't care; he lets the blood trail onto his parchment and he just hands it in like that anyway. You've never seen him so angry.

He broke his foot kicking walls. Madam Pomfrey didn't even ask, so you heard. She just mended his bones and said nothing at all. You think she must be afraid of him.

His father is in prison, his name is now synonymous with 'traitor'. You know he never expected to lose the currency of that name, why would he? When has it ever been questioned? Who is he without that name? A boy with bloody fingers, a boy with nice clothes and a stare so angry it's blank. He forgets himself, you can feel his anger rumbling across a room.

No one is smug about it, not even Potter. Mostly he's locked up in his own little trauma anyway; a death in the family perhaps? Something like that. Someone died, but you're not sure who. Death follows Potter around like an unruly ghost and you're glad you don't know him too well or it might be you next. Instead you can just sit in the common room behind Draco and hope for the best.

Draco writes a lot of letters. You had thought until now that you couldn't send letters to Azkaban. Sending a letter to that place was like trying to send a letter to hell, or to heaven; how would you even address it? To the jaws of death, first door on the right. But apparently you can send letters to prisoners, and it seems that some of them are still sane enough to read them.

Though they say everything is different at Azkaban now. They say the Dementors have left. You don't even want to imagine where they've gone. Hopefully they're not on their way here. Hopefully they will not show their nasty faces in any of the places you'd like to show yours. You've seen enough of those awful things, you've had nightmares about their horrible mouths, about having your soul sucked out of you. Once you dreamed about retching and bringing up your soul all by yourself, vomiting it into the toilet and flushing it down into the bowels of the school. You woke up that morning with stomach flu.

You can't pat yourself down and check for your soul, it's not like a set of keys or your wallet. You worry about that sometimes.

You'd like to intercept one of those letters he writes. They're thick and you wonder if they ever mention you. If they don't, you wonder what they do mention. You wonder if it has anything to do with the strange potions and powders you see cluttered around the common room from time to time. No one questions him. His hard-pressed line of his lips gets tighter every day. When the Gryffindor bathrooms backed up and flooded you know it wasn't an accident. You know he had planned it but that the satisfaction of it wasn't nearly enough. He wants more than to force that boy to bathe in filth. He wants Potter to wallow in it and thank him for the privilege. He wants to suck that boy's soul out of his body and sell it to free his father, that's what you think. But there's only so much he can do, there's only so far beyond the pale even he can go.

You wonder if you can rip a person's soul out of them in other ways.

There is a lot of arguing, a lot of duels and fighting. And he doesn't just hiss and condescend anymore. He yells, he screams, his eyes water and he shakes. He's angry, so angry there's nowhere else for all that anger to go. You think about rabid animals, the kind you've never seen but have heard about. They foam at the mouth, an idea that you find disgusting but strangely tantalizing. As if their madness bubbles out of them and drips off their lips. Even though you know it's silly you watch his mouth for the foam when he's yelling, you wait for it to rise up off his tongue and drip down his chin. You imagine in his case the foam would be flecked with blood.

You suspect that he is trying to kill Harry Potter. It's not the first time you've considered the possibility that he would do something along those lines, but it's the first time you're fairly certain he's in the midst of a plan. That the wheels are turning and there are more people involved than only him. You think about those letters and wonder if it's all in there; an evil plan hatched and approved. There is a vial of some powder on his window ledge beside his bed and it gets a little less full every day. You're not certain, but you imagine that it's arsenic, or something like it. Some tasteless poison, something simple and non-magical, something no one would suspect. You wonder if it could tear a soul from a body, if it could make you vomit up your own life. Simplest of murders. You check on it from time to time, you measure that white powder in your mind. You wonder how and if he's distributing it, sprinkling it on certain foods or dumping it into drinks, but you don't ask. Asking could mean complicity, and you can't afford that.

Not sweet, innocent you.

Arsenic poisoning makes you lose your hair, that's what you've heard. Some tidbit of knowledge or misinformation you picked up at some birthday party or other. You have the most beautiful hair at Hogwarts, which makes you a little nervous. You check it regularly. Not just the front and the sides, but the back as well, with a hand mirror. People think you're just vain, but they don't understand. You don't trust him not to let you get caught in the crossfire of his uncontrollable anger. He would consider it a fair loss for the greater good, he would rationalize anything at this point.

You wonder if he confesses all this in those letters. You wonder what his father thinks. No letters ever come back. The Dementors might be gone, but Draco's owl comes back with empty talons every time.

Like Quidditch, murder is a difficult spectator sport. There are too many players to watch, and the most interesting part of the game is the most difficult to see.


End file.
